Toke TV Stories of the Week

I saw a very energized Washington medical marijuana community last night. By the hundreds they came, from all over the state, some driving more than three hours to be there. From the coast, from the mountains, from the fields of Eastern Washington and the urban canyons of Seattle came the patients to speak their truths, many of them on crutches or in wheelchairs.

Why was all this necessary? Because the Washington State Liquor Control Board, put in charge of recreational marijuana by I-502, has now been given control of medical marijuana, as well, by the Legislature.

The WSLCB recommends that medical marijuana patients no longer be allowed to grow marijuana at home, that all collective gardens be shut down, and that patients register with the state (unlike patients who use any other medicine). The board also recommends deep-sixing the petition process that adds new conditions to the list of illnesses legally treatable by medical marijuana and reducing the amount of marijuana patients can legally possess by 88 percent (from 24 ounces to 3).

The U.S. Justice Department doesn’t have a viable legal basis on which to challenge marijuana legalization laws in Colorado and Washington, Deputy Attorney General James Cole admitted on Sunday.

“It would be a very challenging lawsuit to bring,” Deputy Attorney General Cole said while testifying at the first Congressional hearing on cannabis legalization in the two states, reports Jacob Sullum at Forbes.

Cole said that simply repealing state penalties for growing, possessing, and selling marijuana does not create a “positive conflict” with the Uniform Controlled Substances Act.

Claiming it’s time to bring cannabis “into the fold of the health care industry so patients can buy it at their corner pharmacy,” Sen. Roger Kahn (R-Saginaw Township) and others are backing a bill approved by a state Senate committee last week which would prepare the way for “pharmaceutical grade” cannabis sales, reports David Eggert at The Associated Press.

The measure would create a second system of access to medical marijuana in Michigan, one that its backers say “would not interfere” with the existing law, under which patients can grow their own cannabis or obtain it from designated caregivers. (Of course, the patients of Washington state would be quick to warn folks in other places about a “second system” promised to “not interfere” with safe access, since that’s not been the case with I-502 “legalization” there.)

A Tennessee lawmaker wants to bring hemp farming back to the Volunteer State, and he’s drafting a bill that would do exactly that. State Sen. Frank Niceley (R-Strawberry Plains) said the key to success is educating his colleagues about the differences between industrial hemp and marijuana — and the economic benefits to farmers.

Hemp is used in the manufacture of plastics, insulation, and paper. Hemp seeds are used to supplement protein and omega 3-6-9 essential fatty acids, report Heidi Hall and Adam Tamburin at The Tennessean. Hemp clothes, shoes and purses sell briskly. But growing hemp is illegal in the United States, because lawmakers wrote the marijuana laws to include even low-THC varieties of industrial hemp.

“Their biggest fear is that, if they support hemp, people will think they support marijuana,” Sen. Niceley said. “That’s a cousin of hemp, but cornbread is a cousin of moonshine.”

A Christian pastor who’s getting paid more than $100,000 a year by the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department has been sent home — with pay — after it was revealed he owns a strip mall where a medical marijuana dispensary is located.

Bishop Edward R. Turner, who has worked as a “paid field deputy” for Sheriff Lee Baca and headed the sheriff’s Multi-Faith Clergy Council for 14 years, is being investigated for his connections to a medicinal cannabis access point which is housed in a mall he owns, reports Nancy Dillon at the New York Daily News.

“He was relieved of duty today and assigned to his home with pay,” said sheriff’s department spokesman Steve Whitmore on Wednesday. Whitmore confirmed an internal affairs investigation has started. Rev. Turner was relieved of duty by Sheriff Baca on Thursday after the department learned from KABC-TV Channel 7 about the revocation of Turner’s foundation’s nonprofit status, and that a medical marijuana dispensary is being operated on his property, according to Whitmore.

Ohio’s Marijuana Eradication Program pulled 20,747 cannabis plants from fields in 2013, down from a record high of 84,660 plants in 2010. Law enforcement officials claimed the drop is due to a combination of increased enforcement and indoor growing.

Overwhelmingly, Americans believe — almost two-thirds of them — that it’s unacceptable for companies to fire employees for off-the-clock marijuana use in states where it is legal, according to a new poll.

According to the HuffPost/YouGov poll, that’s the same percentage that said it would be unacceptable to fire employees for drinking during their off time, reports Emily Swanson at The Huffington Post.

The new poll shows that 64 percent of Americans think that if marijuana were legal in their state, it would be unacceptable to fire an employee for toking up during his or her free time. Only 22 percent said it would be acceptable to dismiss them for toking off the job.

Toke TV Must Read of the Week

I’ve loved the culture of cannabis for a long time now. Not long after I first started smoking weed back in 1977, I started collecting rolling paper packs, and kept adding to the collection for roughly the first decade of my stonerdom.

Wonder of wonders, it turns out the collection survived for 30 years and, thanks to my sister Lynda to mailing it from Alabama, it now returns to the light of day. It was very much like opening a time capsule to again see these little relics of a bygone era.

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